Raise your hand if Facebook is a major distraction and time drain for you and your colleagues. If all of us were in the same room right now, I’m guessing I’d be looking out over a sea of waving digits, am I right? For those of us who spend the majority of our working hours online, Facebook has become the rabbit hole we all fall down time and time again, even when we really need to get something done.
As someone working on a startup, you don’t have that time to waste. We’ve written reams of articles about how to keep control of your time and fight the procrastination urge over here at KillerStartups, but I know how hard it can be to stay away from the social media fish net.
(Not gonna lie… I clicked into Facebook while I was halfway through writing that sentence. See what I’m talking about?)
But what if your company had it’s own social network, structured very similarly to Facebook, that encouraged productivity instead of discouraged it? Sounds like a no-brainer and I’m about to hit you with another website you with you thought up yourself: Bitrix24, a social intranet just for you.
My girl Holly did two interviews with Bitrix24 founder Dmitry Valyanov last year (you can check them out here and here), but this is a such a great product we thought it was time to give you a truly in-depth look at what they’ve got going on.
Check it out.
Forget newsfeed…
Because Britix24 has the Activity Stream. Only, instead of updates about what the girl who sat next to you in third grade has for lunch (complete with vintage filtered photo!), the Activity Stream keeps everyone in your company up to date on who’s doing what.
It’s totally customizable, too, so each individual can decide what parts of their process the rest of the team needs to be aware of.
Positive reinforcement for everyone!
Everyone likes seeing a “like” on their post and now you can redirect that feeling toward the work world. In the Britix24 intranet, users can comment on and “like” what their coworkers are posting. This also changes search results, because Britix24 has its own kind of Google Analytics that puts priority on the things people are digging when someone makes a search.
Chit chat through the day
There are two ways you can communicate directly on Britix24: through conversations (think FB messages) and instant messenger (think FB chat). Conversations are aimed toward helping out with group collaboration: they can include as many people as needed and also have options for adding photos or documents.
Instant messenger, on the other hand, is more for private, one-on-one communication. The things that makes it better than any other messaging system you’re using include an indexed, searchable history, searchable contacts, and a Busy status that actually prevents messages from popping up instead of just politely suggesting to people that you don’t want to talk to them.
Everyone knows the pictures are the best part.
And Bitrix24 didn’t leave them out! The photo gallery is a great resource for collaborative projects that call for photos, as well as sharing the parts of your personal life that you’re comfortable showing to your coworkers.
All in all, Bitrix24 is s a great way to build community culture while simultaneously keeping your employees focused and on task. While nothing has yet to beat Facebook in the distraction market, I can confidently say that Bitrix24 will redirect a lot of the focus back to where you want it to be.
